Deadlines and newsrooms: the two shall never be divorced. And what do we rely upon for our timeliness? Clocks, of course!
Once upon a time, the ticking seconds hands of clocks building-wide were controlled by a demanding machine nestled deep in our complex. This concert of time lost and gained ensured that no second of productivity was left uncounted.
But like all mechanical things, this eventually broke. The smooth second hands were replaced with individual timepieces and halting movements. This army of atomic synchronized clocks should have assured a similar accuracy. Except that it didn’t.
I’ve tried correcting them, but the devices have been castrated, no longer adjustable by manual means. One corner of the room may read “get home, fool” while another screams “back to work! five minutes of hellish email remain!”
The end of Daylight Saving Time puts us squarely in the future, autonomous in error by a full, uncorrectable hour (give or take five minutes.)
UPDATE: The clocks, as a collective being, have chosen to behave. We are back to real time (as inaccurate as that usually is.)
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWVB.
The WWVB signal is on 60 kHz, technically longwave, not shortwave. But steel-reinforced buildings would still be a challenge (and the quality of the receivers in the clocks makes all the difference). To quote:
“Since WWVB’s low frequency signal tends to propagate better along the ground, it requires a shorter and less turbulent path to get to the radio receivers than WWV’s shortwave signal, which is strongest when it bounces between the ionosphere and the ground. This results in the WWVB signal having greater accuracy than the WWV signal as received at the same site. Also, since longwave signals tend to propagate much farther at night, the WWVB signal can reach a larger coverage area during that time period, which is why many radio-controlled clocks are usually programmed to automatically synchronize themselves with the WWVB time code during local nighttime hours.
And from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longwave:
“Radio controlled clocks receive their time calibrations signal with built-in longwave receivers. They use longwave, rather than shortwave or mediumwave, because the accuracy of the clocks is not affected by the time signal’s travel from the transmitter to the ionosphere and to the receiver; as longwave travels by groundwave, rather than skywave.